Chili Davis on Pedro's 17K Game

Late to the party with this one, as a bunch of folks have already linked to it, but in case you haven’t seen it, an interview with Chili Davis from the Baseball Prospectus guys. In which he discusses Pedro’s legendary 17K effort at Yankee Stadium.

Davis: And then, Paul O’Neill came up, and he came hard in on O’Neill, jammed him, Bernie Williams came up, he came hard in on Bernie, jammed him, got out of the inning. Well, the next inning, he’s warming up, and Tino Martinez and I are standing on the on-deck circle, and I remember walking over to Tino and saying, “Tino, he’s got a good heater today, and he knows it. He knows it, Tino, and he’s coming in.” Everybody that came up, he started them fastball, hard in. I said, “If I was you, Tino, I’d look in, and try to turn on something.” And Tino was in a slump at the time, and he looked at me, and he was like “You know, uh, you know uh, uh, I don’t know,” kind of hesitant to take the game plan up there. So he went up there, and I think Pedro jammed him up inside, broke his bat or something, and he went back to the dugout. And I stand on deck, and I go, “You know what, you [expletive]? You come in here. Yeah, I know I’m 40, or 39, or whatever years old, I know you think you can get it in. But I’m looking in here. You throw that first-pitch heater in here, and I’m gonna turn on it.” And I’d no sooner said it, he threw that heater inside, and I, I was looking for it, and boom! Turned on it, you know, yeah.

That game marked the one and only time during my Manhattan tenure that New Yorkers, seeing my Red Sox hat, bought me beer. One of my fondest Red Sox memories, period.